George Toles
Auditioning Betty in Mulholland Drive
The Ingenue U'lvtt at the audition.
Anything that is not anonymous is all a dream.
—-William Maxwell. Tile Chateau
Early on I learned to disguise myself in words, which were really clouds.
—Waller Benjamin, Berlin Orfdnood Around í 900
Among llic many tidies beckoning tu us, like a mirage, in lite dream kingdom of David Lynch's MulhoUaiui Drive—where we seem always poised bc-iwcen a bcwUchingly full and an equally bewitching empty experience—is a mustei-key to the mystery of ■.tin acting in movies. I know of no film thai piovides u more comprehensive demonstration of how u stur perfoimanee works, and how it achieves its boundni y -shattering control over us.
Most of the revelations eboul star acting are con-ceiiliated in one astonishing segment: Betty's audition scene, which occurs in the course of (he long day and night in which Betty dcmaterializes. On the one hand, Lynch slowly reveals lu us n deluded, mudcsily lul-enlcd, aspiring actress failing to achieve moic than a sttmd-in status in her own life. Only in live private screening rooms of the actress's faiiliisy and dream life, we eventually determine, is (here any hope of escape
for her, but even there she can never escape the trap of performance. On the other hand, in the course of (lie pivotal audition scene Lynch manages lo show us, just U our skepticism about "all things Hollywood" has ■e.iclied fever pitch, what the power of performance em make happen: how it can swiftly confer a sense of identity and a gntunilcdncss that have sphinx-like credibility. A young woman who could barely be described a* real becomes, through acting alchemy, a figure whose hold on life and on her turbulent inner forces seems stronger, more fraught with consequence than our own—at least lor the length of a "try-out." We would be lund pressed to say exactly to what we are assenting, or what warrants our shift to a believer's vulnerable faith. We believe without knowing, nr ncod-itig to ascertain, what it is that an irresistible performance is asking us to sanction. Moreover, we lind ourselves capitulating (like moviegoers In childhood)
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to everything wc see and (tear immediately after receiving elaborate assurance, within the hideously false context of an ill-managed Hollywood audilion, that, liiere is no possible basis lor belief of any kind.
Once Betty's audition ends, and site enierges front what might justly (be termed a kind of possession, or performer's trance, we viewers may well experience a shrugging or shaking off of u kindred enchantment—-our loo deep immersion in the belief engendered by make-believe. We can rouse ourselves from a strange Interlude of belief, or awaken from it, and in the slightly groggy aftermath wonder Wbelher belief is really live right word to apply to an embarrassingly full involvement. This reflex renunciation of the credulous, mood we were lu u minute ago is similar to our disavowal of a curiously intense dream experience once we are restored to daylight, followed, moie often ihn» not, by a swift disintegration of the dream details in our memory. I reassure myself that on experience was "just a dream," as though that settled the question of my helpless cmhrallnteot to its reality while U»e dream was still in progress. Such enthrallment is obviously sustained by a tutal, innocent acceuinnce of whatever happens as happening "for keeps," however ubsurd ot overblown (he events appear to us in rctrospccL
Before Betty's audition scene, wc arc granted u full advance took at the script she must perform, and her confused amateur's approach to it in a dry run of the scene played with Rila, her non-actress roommate. The scene Bettymust try to bring to life is manifestly hollow; every line of dialogue seems unworthy of a genuine acliess's commitment. The dialogue is ovcr-expllclt, repetitive, and information-clogged, denying any recourse lo on inner life. As for the actress who Is earnestly laboring to make the scene play in rehearsal, she seems hardly more realized or humanly credible in her own right than the character she seeks to inliabil.
Al this point in the film, she seems at one with her improbable name, the flimsy comic-book moniker, "Betty." "Betty" Is a ciiaracter so etttrenched in naivete und the hokey paraphernalia of snialMowiiness that her whole confected being is u hymn to unreality. The viewer is discouraged from imagining her life histoiy as anything more than an amusing pastiche of siule movie conventions. Site is a plastic newcomer to big-city ways (like Pamela Tiffin In (he embalmed 1960s remake of Rodgers and llutumerstein's Siaie Fair). From Belly's first appearance, site is armored in a nice-DMI that keeps her virlually uniouctied by the confounding, fearsome events inking place aruund her. She leads a vacantly dimmed life. Moating into the movie as u beaming ghostly apparition at a jillerbtig contest, and continuing to float in her subsequent mute substantial appearances on escalators at the L.A. airport or In her tour of her "borrowed" apailmeni. One quickly teams to watch Hetty's i espouses to situations with i lie confidence thai cheerful puzzlement and pluck will Invariably be Ihe dominant notes. On a few occasions, something darker creeps almost imperceptibly into her cxptessiun for a moment, but ihe viewer Is not expected lo catch these liny shifts. We are held by our Hrst. forceful impression of her: intractable sunniness. Naomi Watts, who plays Betty, is remarkably adept at finding fresh ways to reaitnnge (he sugar packets of Betty's concerns. Walls is sincerely (as opposed to condescendingly) engaged with Iter character's buoyancy and shadow-free conviviality - -without needing to hide Ihe fact ihut Belly is disconnected from any world larger than her movie-denned "hopes." Naomi Watts wus known to film audiences prior to Mulholland Drive, if at all, as a competent "background player" (one whose job was lo blend In rather than Mandou!). For that reason, Betty cannot draw extra definition and weight from our familiarity with an already established
Batty (Nsoml Wuu) te»ipjrifli with bitlvob« tnd bolter knife.
J
Wans persona. Lynch makes il ilí tfícull, in oilier words, for us lo sec mound Hetty, and thus gauge tlie separate icah'ty of ihc actress who endows hei with an appearance and a voice.
II is fair lo say then Haul nothing in either Belly or in Naomi Wans* untclf-conscious (10 the point of seeming un-sclf-awiuc) way of depicting Iter puis lire character al odds with the two-dimensional audilion scene apparatus she coníionis when unctuous movie producer Wally leads her into his office. We sec a nervous, smiling young woman, almost certainly out of her depth even in litis emphatically shallow Hollywood selling, being introduced lo an assemblage of mostly interchangeable personnel who have some connection to a low-budget movie that Beity has been invited (us a courtesy to her aunt) to rend for. Though Mutltothoul Drive has challenged us with many bewildering, pathless, leasingly ihoiny episodes prior to the audition scene, we arc encouraged to feel more securely placed and confident about what is going on at Ulis nairailve juncture than perhaps at any previous point in the him. We link the audition scene with the many previous glimpses of "insider" movie culture lhal Lynch has offered us, all of which share a quasi-satiric lone. The behavior of the people in the audition room as ihey ate hastily presenied lo Belly increases our conviction that they have no serious claim on our attention. They aic industry sieieolypcs, designed for service in a comedy sketch. We understand them at first glance: ihc Producer, dispensing dried-out blarney; the pretentious fool of a Director, sporting a dismally unflattering Ľnol Flynn mustache, who tries to sound knowtcdgable and fails at every tum; crisp, polite, but visibly skeptical and bored Casting Agents; and a sybaritic Leading Man, who has spent too much time in Hie sun and in throwaway TV movies, and whose face resembles a grinning catehei's mill. The names attached to these nondescript professionals in the fatuous round of bi-troduciions refuse somehow to slick to their putative owners. Tttc perky unreality of Betty's name is like a virus communicating a kindred improbability lo the many names exchanged (or floated) in her presence; Woody, Bob. Wally, lack. Lynnic lames. Chuck.
Our already established suspicion that Ihc script for the intended movie is nonsensical easily leads lo the judgment that the material has found just the right group of people to ensure that il* mediocrity will be respected—in fa«, vigilantly protected on all sides. The atmosphere is thick wilh saliric signals that litere is no place for art in Urn guttering, and that if art entered by accident, it would go unrecognized. The vocabulary of ftaudulcncc that defines—and binds
together—this club of seasoned hacks is an instant corrosive to any lively intuition or Rash of inspiration. If we were asked to predict the outcome of Betty's audition early in Hie scene, my guess is that most viewers would envision (perhaps even wish for) a disastrous comic deflation of poor Betty's hopes. Tlicre is potential for ugliness in Betty's humiliation, since slic has no experience with Hollywood guile, or its familiar sidekick, casual brutality. Though Betty is strictly a B-movie creation herself, both in her Innocence and siai-siruck yearning, Lynch has alerted us (here and in his other Alms) Hiat he is able to reduce even plastic ingenues lo spasms of compelling woe. For Lynch, the fact of a character's conspicuous fabrication is no safeguard againsi real hurl. He often reserves his greatest loiincnis for those most deeply enfolded in artifice, as though Ihc artificial (in its nearness to dream) were the naiural seedbed for trauma.
The possibility 'bat no oik viewing this film for tlie first time could foresee is that the audition would be electrifying in an unsaüric, uniionic manner—in other words, a legitimate triumph. Even if Bcuy is able lo persuade ihc unqualified observers sleepily spread about ilte studio office that slic has an appealing freshness or the "right look." we assume lhat she cannot rise above her own cleverly molded limitations to escape the flatness of Hetty's emotional life. She "warns the part," to be sure, with dc foursquare eagerness of many a daydieaming neophyte, bul she has no resources, no audacity lo bring lo the task of revealing herself to the camera. Further, the io)e Itself seems built for the express purpose of thwarting truthful exploration.
The actors—Belly and her offhandedly lecherous assigned partner, Woody, who looms over her—ate given almost no space in which to play the scene. They begin in Ihc mout awkward position Imaginable, »early backed against a wall. Woody holds her tight and seeks openings for permissible groping as lie prepares to repeal, for the twentieth time, in a smooth, automatic fashion, the dull lines he has long since grown weaiy of. The director, Bob, intervenes just before (he audilion gels underway wilh some advice thai is neither intelligible nor capable of being clarified. Bob cautions Betty lhat the audition (and Ihc scene ílscll) should not be regarded as a coolest. A contest, of course, is precisely what an audilion is, and lite only clear thing in the script pages Betty has worked on is thai a power Slniggle (another contest) is taking place. Bob goes on to set up Ihe characters as incommunicado monoliths: "lite two of them ... with themselves." He concludes with the injunction that they not "play it for real, until it gets real." This would imply lhat Ihe roomful of list-
Above; Ekity It Introduced to a e ramped room ol Hollywood professionals.
rujhc Baity and Woody play It "nie* and elow.-
less spectators has all lite lime in the world for lite performers to consult the temperature of their emotions "in private." Betty and Woody should hold off on interacting umil they arc fully convinced that reality, unvarnished und incontestable, underwrites their relationship. Woody, as confused as Betty, gallantly (as he sees Íl) takes up her cause, attempting to relieve Iter embarrassment with an old pro's directness and simplicity. He decides to "make it real" for her by playing it "nice and close," pressing her against him with the wall as backup. To compound Betty's worries, lie declares his intention lo duplicate Ihc strategy he employed in an earlier, no doubt memorable audition with another actress ("Ute girl with black ball"). Belly, having not been present for ihc bUck-haitcd rival's reading, and having no clue about wlrat made her approach intriguing, is promptly reduced to the status of body double for an absent (still vividly recalled) predecessor. Woody is dusting off a performance lhat once had a spark of life in the moment of playing, and enjoins Belly to revive the "ghost" of her unseen competitor so he can reenaci his own good bits. Bob again inlcrvcnes. apparently delighted to be reminded of lite audilion In question. He urges Woody lo remember "this time" not to rush the line "Before what?" as though Woody were the actor trying out aitd the one to whom Bob planned to pay alleniion. Al the moment when all ihc hokum and degrading absurdity of the moviemaking process have been stripped baie and savagely mocked, Woody launches Betty into the scene with tlte courtly blaiKlishmcnt Uiat they're going 10 play it "just like in tlte movies "
And into the movies we go. but as I've already noted, not at all in Ihe manner that we could anticipate.
Betty has come lo the audition space dressed in a gray suit, which is clearly mcanl to evoke forceful memories of the famous gray suit worn by Kim Novak in Hitchcock's Vertigo. In lhat film, Novak's initially hidden primary character, Judy Barton, wears ihe suit wlten she is impersonaling the wattdering. tragically innocent, lost-to-memoi), and romantically possessed Madeline Elsicr.1 Betty removes her gray jacket in order to perform mote fiecly (gray gives way to her sky-blue blouse), divesting herself, il would seem, of a layer of formality. Tlte Vertigo connection cues us (o be on lite lookout for a second Belly identity, one somehow ut variance with ihc first—less assured, perhaps, or less shielded fiom whatever trouble the situation is clearly preparing for Iter.
Wlten Lynch selects a medium-shot vantage point to frante Betty's audition (one lhat allows actors and space, finally in proper attunemeui. to blend properly), he is subtly displacing "Bob" as the directorial presence. Until this subtle transfer of diicciorl.il authority, (he whole office space had felt disproportionate and off-kilter as a cinematic setting. The room is a long rectangle, whose furnishings seem wrongly situated for comfort (much less intimacy). One is mentally driven to reanange things, lo reduce ibe overall clutter and sense of unnatural distance and fish-eye elongation, liven Ihc socially maladroit spectator could come up with a more sensible seating plan: everyone in Ihe room looks slightly oul of place, sillier poised for quick flight or resigned to entrapment. Nothing provides a center or gathering point. The room's color scheme is arduously brown, reminding me of the insanely over-determined burnt sienna coir» coordination in Gene Ticrncy's desert hacienda in Leave Her 10 Heaven. In
S
ydSlof M much c,tüCül!lle decor, *c possibly rich "c . paneling acquires an air of basement iec-room o^^iiicss- Lynch does noi place undue emphasis on design "mistakes." Belly's nervousness aitd oui
lo share her mildly hallucinatory poinl of Kulenls unnoticed by her in lo justify !he disagreeable.
UteSf
' while scouting out portents unnoticed by her in
"ujngcongcsiion.
Our sense of lime leading imo the audition is
,|y disjointed. Tne editing lakes its rhythm, u bit
ei,u. esjy. ftom Wally's meandering, one-by-one inlro-
0111 )on 10 Betty of Ills production team. Wally, who
d"t_s lK) more to us than his associates, emotionally
itols Ö* lime-flow' i" the room as he moves Betty. rLaky-ja^y manner, through an incomprehensible m ir of alien points-of-vicw. There is another time ""Ti (fiom torpor to urgency) once the introductions Shl    been concluded. Wally makes it known, with
hiii"")'
iclish, that there's to be no more dawdling;
Be«>'
must instantly shift gears and "play the scene.'
nup
Betty is dressed
Hitchcock heroine, the '^jiion of images thus far is the obvious antithesis pl- Hitchcock lucidity and fluent, "infallible" viewer 01 aUCDi within an event. We are naturally inclined to P ^ (WI«elves with Betty, but we hove a Utile difficulty
main
mining contact with her. She is never hidden, but
lKithci
do we have a clear emotional channel to her. I
„Id argue that though the time within the room "'folds subjectively, it is not necessarily her subjec-un([, dial governs it. Not until Betty speaks her first "* .Vjn [he script" line ("You're still here") do film c and time, in Waller Benjamin's phrase, "come '5ol&*ii °wn fw',n'n ,ne scene] and find each other."' !_,. previously inhospitable audition room and its,
otic "clock" are effortlessly adjusted to the per-
(„%=«'advamaEC'
atien Betty had rehearsed her audition scene with
in her kitchen, her entire performing strategy de-
^led o" gradually reduced physical distance from
P[' adversary. As her character's threats intensify and
Z,, bomicidul intention crystallizes, she planned to
"*   m on her victim. Woody destroys this possibility
k  insisting that Betty begin lo speak while caughl in
bear-hug embrace. The viewer is Initially apprc-
Uí«ive iliat Bellv 's thrown off by this switch, and has
■ her bearings. We have no reason to imagine dial her
i   , oj iesourccfulness will enable her lo deal with
toiosecn developments, li seems less a question of
,1*,, she will he deprived of confidence and control
MS "lílťn- Suicc "*"* "** cvmced ba,c,ya "acc of ,uul awareness in her previous scenes—even when
e   cha"00 uP°n nokcd R',a ln net »»"I's shower
on
stall—we no doubt feel that she is unequipped both as a person and as an actress to fend off (or take in stride) Woody's "automatic pilot" lasciviousncss. However little credence we give to Betty as a fully developed chiiracter. we can't easily avoid feeling protective of her when site is so overmatched. Woody, with his massive hulk, appears to be intimidating a small, childlike woman, who Is frightened but situaiionally conslraiucd from saying so. We resent the actor's pushincss and his falsely paternal arrogance.
Betty appears to he forced by the unwelcome proximity of her partner to speak her first line before she is completely ready. We also imagine her consternation at Ihe discovery that a scene she had construed as a climactic quarrel is being treated as a love scene. All her notions about tier appropriate emotional relationship to her partner arc abruptly taken away from her. Tlte authentic notes that Betty is striking in the first exchange of the audition derive from our sense that Betty is not yet acting: she U merely unable to conceal her agitation at what her fellow-actor is doing. She "forgets" (so wc imagine) how much the audition means to her. and— with an instinctive protest born of discomfort—site pushes Woody away after he kisses her without warning, then holds him off with a suddenly firm, even imposing, outstretched arm. We arc surprised, and impressed, by a degree of physical determination that wc have not before now encountered in her. On tlte instant, her seeming frailty is hacked by a steel will.
Belly holds her open hand against Woody as diough she has every right to take command of the situation; she is Mustered, but not apologetic. What Ls most remarkable here is the way that Lynch makes us uncertain of whether wc are watching an actress or a character defending herself. Because wc are more or less persuaded that Betty Is an unimaginative, severely restricted performer, when we witness her expressing genuine turmoil in her struggle with Woody, we are likely lo conclude, at first, that U is the actress who cannot manage her feelings, and who is compelled to resist him. Wc arrive at this conclusion before we have had lime to process the thought Utat the behavior we assign to the actress bears virtually no relation to the "Betty construct" we have up to now been working with. The viewer is not sure if he is watching the audition scene unravel. Betty may well be making "mistakes" as her raklcd innocence awakens her survival instincts.
Though we aren't peniiilted 10 observe the reactions of those watching the audition, we may naturally wonder how they are interpreting what tliey ore looking at. "Do they sec what wc see'/™ is a reasonable phrasing of our concern. Lynch encourages us to imagine
that we are one or two jumps ahead of tlte Hollywood dullards who are carelessly assessing Betty's performance. It is quite possible that they imagine that Belly is. so far. icacting lo Woody "in characlei." The judges of this audition don't know Betty as well us wc do; they perhaps interpret her squeamishness, her upset and aversion as feigned for the sake of the written scene. How long will Betty be able to extend her involuntary, but fortunate, act of deception? When will they discern that her distress is interfering with the scene's development? And when she crashes, as site soon must, will they be impressed by the raw energy that has been goaded out of her? Lynch knows that we arc eager to seize on the prospect that wc arc being let in on something dial others aren't privy to—that wc are being given, at last, a peek at Mullwlland Drive's inside story. For that reason, we find ourselves believing, almost unreservedly, the audition scene as it begins to unfold. The fact that Betty's "real" feelings are pulling her into conflict with the demands of a trite scenario—and that wc arc catching those feelings as (hey erupt, ahead of other spectators who are more readily duped by movie conventions—makes it a "smart move" to surrender to Lynch's illusion. We do so because wc imagine we are doing the opposite; we ate entranced by our own wariness. The viewer is sokl on Die audition's truth, in its early stages, because wc have a stake in the tension arising from an actual peison's protest against being submerged in sterile make-believe.
While all of this is going on. Lynch has surreptitiously corrected, and beautifully enhanced, the scene's color scheme. Betty's sky-blue blouse mates appctiz-ingly with the rich, patrician blues of Woody's suit.
Behind this harmonized pair, lite previously overstated brown on the walls and woodwork begins to soften, and acquire an elegant sheen. Tlte wall no longer Iraps Betty but quietly supports the actors, lending its own burnished solidity to theirs.
The major transition in the audition scene uccurs wlicn Woody moves in to embrace Betty a second time and she registers with a different qualily of awareness ihe fact that his hand is hovering near her ass. It is here lhal Betty, as actress (aitd character) evolves, in a mailer of seconds, into a more advanced organism. We all understand, at some level thai doesn't require much reflection, thai good acting involves (minimally) a mixture of pretending and believing. Our initial skepticism about Betty's ability to lake on the demands of another cliaracler is thai she seems to have almost no faculty for living up to her own character (if that means diverging from type). She does not show any signs of having begun to consider that others inay imagine her—or evaluale her actions—in a decidedly different manner than she does. The resistance of oilier minds to her fantasy of what she is is no! a question she has reckoned with, or even formulated. We might grant her a willingness to enter inio ihe scripted sentiments assigned to her (like a child playing with dolls), but her grasp of pretending is rudimentary. She does not see how pretending can be informed by deiaclirnenl. calculation, and duplicity. Her approach to pretending is akin to a young girl's announcement after a visu to her mother's clothes close!: "Look, I'm wearing your hal and fur. Isn'l thai funny?" We have also sccn Betty's amateur experiment with "little white lies" in her attempts to assist her new friend-in-a-jam. Rita. Nevertheless, a
B«ry u*«i control
■BHHBtl
WWmilUIKllllHUMIILIllMPIIl   lllvn
split oťa very different kind suddenly manifests itself in me playing out »I the audition scene. We behold Betty crossing over, in so many ways at once that die effect is breathtaking, from guileless pretending to majestic double-dealing.
Lynch highlights llie divide by deserting, as if in secret, tlie playing area framed for the actors and inserting u close-up of an action below the public performing space, whet« urgent "under the table" business is being conducted. We observe Woody's hand grazing Uie tear of Betty's skirt and Betty's answering hand —with an almost autonomous sentience—making a decision about how to take charge of it: either by warding it off or inviting it closer. The hesitation of the actress about how to contend with the encroaching hand endows Betty, for the first time in the film, with a visible calculating power. She elects to control her antagonist by taking control of his hand, pressing it against herself harder than Woody had dared to. Betty's hand, still in clandestine close-up, covers his. and thereby takes possession of it. By guiding his hand to make a strong sexual claim on her. Betty makes the aptly named Woody understand that if he takes bet with sufficient boldness, she will respond fully. When the audition commenced, less than a minute ago, we were chiefly concerned that Betty would be degraded by an old-hand predator in front of a group of venal L.A. buffoons who would be likely to go along with any of Woody's lewd antics. (Our conception of her as a plastic innocent briefly gave way, in the course of her suddenly real physical struggle with bei fellow actor, to the thought that a convincingly vulnerable woman was being threatened. The depiction of abuse is visccrally disturbing, and ihe victim seemed to be in no position to defend herself.) Betty's acting choice to make her own sexuality pan of die "game" is a thunderbolt for the viewer because, righi up to the moment of choosing, her sexual nature has lain utterly dormant, folded beneath hei vulcanized naivete, so that it seemed not even available for private acknowledgment. The release of sexual awareness is offered as a heightened form of n "let's pretend" moment. All we have time to absorb, as Betty's hand makes its move and the lace o( the actress seems to confer with her hand tactically (looking down at this furtive ally), is that an actress is making a spontaneous choice to give the chancier she is portraying a strong erotic connection to her punnet.
The aptitude to unleash her libido comes from out of nowhere, but once Betty consciously seises on ihe impulse, her expression conveys to us that she knows exactly what to do with it. She expertly refocuses the
scene so that her excitement at Woody's proximity (or conversely, her excitement over successfully manipulating Itim into thinking so) is die new center of interest. The acness is becoming attuned lo dimensions of her role that were hitherto undreamed of—not only by her, but by Ihe viewer. The viewer understands the well-worn convention of an anxious performer receiving sudden inspiration when "up against the wall" and then ceasing to flounder. That is the most convenient explanation to latch onto as we try to subdue our bewilderment and convert the alarming infusion of strangeness into something familiar. We may well entertain the question: "Who Is using whom, at this point?" but in part we are merely relieved that Betty l he actress is, against all odds, up to t lie demands of what is taking place. "She is more talented than I had supposed" is imother convention-dictated impression that gains fleet entry into the viewer attempting to sort things oui—and to find the least taxing route to restored clarity.
The delayed recognition of what is really tran-spiiing has to do with the abruptly transformed character of the actress herself. A talented performer is indeed rising to the challenge under the most adverse circumstances, and she is making a series of magically right splll-scwmd decisions. Nevertheless, wc need more time ilia» we arc given to register the fact that the woman who intuits under pressure what her role might include to enrich itself (moving well beyond die cramping straightforwardness of the script writer) is not—cannot be—Beity, as we have known her. To become the cagey, experienced professional who now confronts us, she must part company completely with the "dewdrop" Nancy Drew type that she has relied on for her entire onscreen definition. Someone new is at the controls, someone whom—we dimly sense—we know nothing about. To find out who she is, or might be, we arc obliged to turn our attention to the fictional character beiug enacted—a figure thai graduates, for ihe balance of the scene, lo the status of primary source of meaning.
Notice how the deep soundlessness of the offscreen group of witnesses, and of the room itself, creates a "just like at the movies" effect at this interval. Wc are following Betty into her newfound trance of involvement, with no sense of the world's competing presence, or ability to distract her from her make-believe goal. She is alone with her partner, with the camera, and with us. As Belly leaves her ingenue persona behind, who docs she become for the truth-seeking camera? What is die nalure of this metaniorpltosis? Who is auditioning for us now? The viewer is virtually com-
mandeered into thinking about "Naomi Watts" herself—especially if we have no experience of her beyond her presentation in this film. The character that Betty is reading for, after all, has no special dramatic significance at first viewing. Prior lo the audition. Waits' potential range as an actress has not been an issue that we have been given much cause to dwell on. If anything, she appears to match up almost too flawlessly with Betty's resolute hlandncss. Nowhere have her eyes signaled an aleitness, a sensitivity, a degree of achieved inwardness greater Uian Belly's own. So we receive a salutary shock when wc arc reminded, post the halfway mark in Mulholiand Drive, lhal the aspiring actress Watts has capacities for expressiveness and allure thai she has been expertly holding in reserve. One is inclined lo congratulate Walts for her handling of the audition, as wc gradually catch on to Ihe fact dial "Betty" has been slipped off like die gray jacket and auottier, far more formidable presence stands in her place. We compare "Betty's" acting with Walls' more intense, exposed impersonation of an aroused lover and conclude, however irrationally, that Walls is a better, more accomplished artist than Betty. For a short, unhinged interval we have ihe impression of watching Betty expand emotionally to incorporate lite larger persona of Ihe mysterious "Walts," while simultaneously considering Ihe possibility that Betly has sneakily, shadily kept something from us.
We speedily reverse that judgment in favor of the more sensible idea of Watts emerging in triumph from a "Betty" cocoon of her own making, and applaud her for carrying off such a brazen, instantaneous transformation. We are plcasurably struck by how thoroughly the skill of this new actress has deceived us. Yet we may lingeringly also feel, albeit hazily, lhat Watts is betraying Betly—both by exceeding her scant powers as an insecure amateur and by cunningly violating her innocence, shredding it beyond repair. She is somehow competing against her former self, and grabbing every available advantage in order to trounce her. She is free 10 mock, because die audition scene allows it, every last outcropping of timorousness in her personality, including that schoolgirl variety exemplified by her bewildered rival, Betty. Lynch treats us lo a sexual version of one of those speeded-up nature films in which a plant grows to full maturity and luxurious blossoming in Ihe space of a single breath. Wc watch, with a prurient, volatile blend of queasiness and excitement as an unseasoned girl, lacking every protection sophistication offers, advances by means of a solitary squeeze of die hand lo the farthest reaches of sexual knowing. Watts reveals a figure who is not merely prac-
ticed and ullerly confident in her ability to excite and subdue a male quarry, but one wIki calculates (always) from a bruised position.
Sex is no sooner established as a shared language lor tbc acting couple than it shifts from a spur for provocative teasing to a recognition of authentic hazard. Every maneuver Betty initiates upholds the mouo: break uc be broken. She significantly reverses Ihe order of one line from her previous rehearsal scene with Rita. "You're playing a dangerous game here" now begins, radier dian concludes, the speech il,„i rneirtions a blackmail threat (from the male) that is "not going to work." Rearranging ihe sentences places Wans/Belly on lop of the danger. Site glows with it and gains strength from it. while serving notice that the danger is real—however much sexual play intervenes. As ihe actress takes convincing ownership of the menace that underlies the film as a whole, in ihe guise of acting it out, Naomi Waits secures our allegiunce to herself as ihe rightful star of Mulholiand Drive. Until this scene, Luura Elena Harring's Rita has been the dominant, glamorous fe> mule presence in the narrative, in spite, or because of, her amnesiac discombobulation. She is firmly wedded to the film's principal mystery from her initial drive irp die street of the Ulm'í title- during ihe credit sequence, after which she is instantly sel up for murder and saved by a gruesomcly providential cur crash. We assume that either she or the objects associated with her hold Ihe key (a blue key, as it turns out—Belly's color in ihe audition) to ihe past
In (be acting out of her nameless character in die äudiiion, Wans/Belly effectively steals the sense of danger and darkness thai her friend Rita had previously embodied. These were the two known ingredients (or reference points) of Riia's otherwise vaporous identity. Wans not only appropriate* Rita's "danger and darkness" (and theft is exactly the right word for it. calling to mind the old acdng phrases, "scene stealing" and "stealing the show"), she enhances their interest by making fully conscious use of them, as far as die audition circumstances permit. She appears to know everytliing that is at issue, at least for the lime being, and by turning up the sexual hem while announcing her involvement in masquerade and her intention to murder, she trumps Harring's mote passive possession of mystery. Wails is like a shimmering, ravenous bird bearing Ihe truth of bloudlusi out 10 us on its beak, (Think of the end of Blue Velvet, vhcre just such a bird poses for us like a meclianical toy. proudly displaying ihe insect-kill in its beuk.) Betty's incarnation of the bird flies near to us in close-up, where the ragged, excited breath of the lovers is as audible as beating wings.
9
The vulnerable heart of the once fallering actress turns 10 animal indifference as she ineumorjitioses for us and then rises to her lull acting height.
Woody is bound tight to this fledgling ereutiue, and he gains a surprising amount of fresh interest as the overshadowed half of a couple. His assigned role is that of the young woman's father's best friend. We learn lhat he is accustomed to taking advantage of this fam-ily «Ucluneiii as soon as dad leaves lor work. Almost all of his lines focus attention on the absent father, either by speculating on his present whereabouts or considering the consequences of his getting wind of the friend's betrayal. The repeatedly invoked fatlier streaks the love scene with shadows of incest. "Dad" seems to be peering over the lovers' shoulders and serving as a iroubling stimulus for Belly's arousal. When Betty tells Woody twice to "stop"—unconvincingly. because Iter continued kissing coaxes him forward—it would appear that she is replying to his query. "What will yoor dad think of you?" Site is lodging a faint verbal protest against Woody's repeated reminders of dad. yet at the same time "fanning her own flames" with the reminders, and using them to push herself out of control. Near the end of the audition, when Hetty brings ihc dialogue to a halt, places an arm with a closed list around Woody's shoulder and initiates a lengthy, open-mouth kiss, we may remember that the director hod instructed Woody—as his last piece of muddled advice to the players—not 10 rush the line "Before—what?" this time. Betty's forceful Imervcniion to create a "motivated" pause makes Bob's acting itole to Iter partner something else that she has taken over. The kiss masterfully prevents Woody from rushing, and fills the resulting silence to the brim with suggestiveness and anticipation- Betty's clenched fist is a pantomime curry-ovcr from her rehearsal with Rita where she brandished a harmless-looking dinner knife to make clear the ex-
tent of her vengeful rage. Now she merely pretends to hold a knife, it would seetn, though there is no longer need for one. Perliaps Betty's closed palm holds a "blue key," which will later be the object designated to seal "Rita's" death warrant. Lynch ventures a second Hitchcock allusion here—to the famous Ingrid Bergman embrace of Claude Rains in Notorious, which is used to conceal a key hidden in the deceiving partner's hand. In that scene as well, the hidden key marked a major ad of betrayal.
Woody's most noteworthy moment in the audition follows Betty's announcement, once the kiss is concluded, that she means to kill him. He takes several beats to assess the seriousness of the threat she has made, letting us see his deliberations about whether to place his trust in her convincing passion or tier whispered warning. For the first time in the scene Woody actually establishes prolonged, searching eye contact with Betty. What he discovers in her look not only causes his character to draw bock in fear, but the actor himself to do so. (Lynch brilliantly extends ihc pattern of role confusion at every possible opportunity.) Here we have a parallel to Betty responding at the outset of the audition to the actor's brusque sexual forwardness with a discomfort that appeared to issue from her. Woody** upset resembles Betty's earlier scare; if we watch him carefully we see that it is the performer's deadly resolve that panics him slightly, and obliges him to draw back. He uses his final line ("Then they'll put you in jail") as a means of recovering his acting composure.
The main purpose of Woody's momentary per* turbed dislocation is to establish the idea that Betty is resorting to what actors describe as the trick or technique of "substitution." In order to play an emotionally difficult action with the requisite truthfulness, an actor may supplement the scene's fictional circuro-
Bettr pujJiei U »j «roues of the audition far beyond expectation*.
10
stances with an emotional memory (or substitution from another relationship) that increases the size and strength of her commitment to the fictional givens. We cannot be certain who oc wliat Betty is envisioning, but we do have time to consider that she is looking through Woody—rather than directly at him. It is possible that we flip through our own memories of Betty to find a feasible answer to Ihc double Question: "who is she staring at. who is the missing person?" Since nearly all of Betty's life in the film, such as it is, has been spent in Rita's company, and since we have witnessed her practice this same climax (conucally) with Rita's faltering assistance only minutes ago, we may well return mentally to that rehearsal to see how Rita 0IS the present picture. When Betty arrived at the big emotional moment in rehearsal, she told Rita how silly it seemed to shed plausible tears for such a "lame" melodramatic confrontation, and summarized for her benefit the action si« was not yet in the mood to "play for real." After tlie two women share a laugh, and Betty loses concentration, she explains: "Ttten I cry, cry, cry, and then I say, with big emotion. '1 hate you. I hate us both.'" Rita responds to Betty's embarrassment by reassuring her that whatever Hie limitations of the scene. Betty has enough talent to make it work. She compliments her with the unstudied admiration of the non-pcrformci, and with the fine-tuned judgment of an amnesiac,
If Betty is. indeed, picturing Rita when she replays tlie scene with Woody, she is also disregarding all of her earlier stated notions about how the end of the scene should be handled. She speaks the "hatred" lines softly, and once more she appears to be disengaged from Woody—physically as well as emotionally— when she sounds litem out. Her tears, which surface with no cue for active weeping, follow rather than precede the lines, and arc visible very briefly. Betty is not attempting to weep. She hardly conveys Ihc impression of even noticing her tears. She is rather caught on the hook of an unbidden painful thought, and she closes the audition in the same trancelike condition thai she assumed when entering it. Site Is "alone with herself," yei again ironicully taking one of the director's inept preliminary notes and transmuting it into a thing of beauty.
In the logic of the scene itself, the female character may he addressing her hatred to her absent father, with whom she may have a dreadful score to settle. However, in the logic of Mulholland Drive as a whole, the playacting of a projected death intersects with lite already executed hired slaying of "Betty's" onc-tiroc friend and female lover. While Naomi Watis is still
busy delineating, on one level, Betty's potentially life-altering audition, her acting speaks to and encloses another woman's tragedy (a woman we haven't, at this point in the narrative, officially met). Given a firsi-tiiue viewer's sta(e of partial knowing duriug :■... audition, the buried tragedy and the guilt flowing from it are preiiy much a blank to us, but we can feel them nonetheless taking shape in Betty's face here, long before the sordid "true history" comes to lighl.
As we return to an awareness of Betty's audition-evaluators in the Hollywood office, we are ai the very least mindful of how far we have traveled from (he episode's mislcadingly crude saiiric setup. When Betty demurely descends to earth with her sheepish "Well, there it is" (accompanied by a dancer's hand gestures), our most honest questions for ourselves are likely to be: "How did I believe so thoroughly what that actress was doing, and wluu precisely did I believe?" For belief, of the most impressively various sort, was haunt-ingly at stake throughout. All the cynical advance preparation we were given did not give us any of the expected detachment from, or intellectual jurisdiction over, ihe Big Movie Scene's life. The skeptic in us came into the room laden with a will to expose (once again) the Hollywood charade, thereby disavowing our ooce-upon-a-timc cnthrallment to such things. What happens instead is ihut the skeptic is unwclcomcly relieved of his superior, scoffing pose. Perhaps the skeptic is secretly pleased to have it taken away, and to be suddenly at the mercy of a sincerity hatched at ihc very core of artifice.
I began by describing the audition scene as a master-key to star acting. Lynch sets before us, with a thoroughness that is not compromised by extreme compression, all the major barriers to identification with performers and their contrived roles that movie viewers enamored of their own reality sense commonly complain about. He also illuminaies how rife with contradictions our engagemenl willt any star performance is. yet shows how an awareness of contradictions, far from rescuing us from naive involvement, can increase the likelihood of wholesale surrender to the acting hoax. Tlte "argument" of the sceoe is that both our resistance and assent to what stars reveal to the camera has lillle to do with what we boriť about the lines dividing imaginary situation* from life as it is actually lived. We watch with a feeling approachiug awe as a star emerges from tlte husk of a mildly appealing noti-entity, in circumstances which are pepjtcred with warnings against taking fakery of precisely this sort to heart. The full throttle romantic acting of tlte old Hollywood school penetrates our defenses just as we
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37
are most conŕiilen! iluir wc understand the lintitations— the unembarrassed obviousness—of ihis kind of act-iiif Moreover, we ňii! ourselves attending to Bciiy as someone involved with matter* of genuine consequence a* the makes her way through a script we have already judged empty, and after »ho expressly announces hei iiitetition to act a pari lor our critical evalualiou.
As viewers, we are struck by the seeming disclosure of a mesmerizing Wans Klar peisona ai exactly the point where we have logical grounds for objecting thai this "contusing" actress has entirely lost touch with her »signed character. Perhaps our involvement with all star personae work* in a similar fashion. The pei-IOQ1 is never iruiie accounted for by the attiibutcs of a specific character, however beguiling lhal character may be, and in spite of our conviction that a pcrsonu and a certain type of role naturally fuse. I would argue that the persona depends on a divided but not grating experience of someone as both emotionally accessible (dňu known lo us in a persuasively intimate way) and continually eluding our grasp. In the supposedly simple case of John Wayne, for example, the more intensely he appears to be known, (he more he manages to preserve (or even increase) his margin of unknown-ness. The unknown in its seductive relation lo the known is always the split that makes a star persona compelling. Belly takes us "through" the screen of appearances, while acting, to suggest a depth of misery-fuelled chicanery in herself. This is a wrenching tum for tin' viewer because we have been so thoroughly convinced that she dwells entirely, and contentedly, on a flat surface; an ideal inhabitant of a movie screen. Deity's face suddenly opening up lo us to demand an emotional response is an exemplary instance of the still inexplicable primitive rite thai is cinema. A moving-picture image somehow acquires enough living dimension in swallow the credulous viewer whole. I low is it we invest these dubious framed reflections with so much embracing powei? How many "real" sights and sounds get through to us with such potent immediacy? Lynch provides us with a cuiilt of densely interwoven recognitions to lake away from his audition scene, leaving us struggling for a glimpse of terra firmu within its capacious folds.
Belly, (or her pan, leaves Ute audition encumbered wiili an imperious sex drive that came into being for the actress at the moment she pretended to have one. Succeeding with her audition also results in her acquiring an initiate's sense of darkness, an eagerness to manipulate otheis' wills, and a Houbled awareness of the transformative potential lurking in previously "stable" persons and objects. Site must somehow hide all these
newfound discoveries from her freshly intrigued (now waiy) socciaiiirs as well as from herself if she is to keep "Betty" credible. This necessary retreat inward— willi its demand thai she now art Betty as one of many possible roles instead of simply "being" her—serves notice that the person bearing that "sec-through" name and temperament is rapidly decomposing. Her lime to occupy this cohesive identity, as though it were a permanent safe refuge, has run out.
The emotional structure of this episode, which depends on an unlikely performance taking hold of spectators, onscreen and off. and generating perilous consequences for the performer who risks belief, is a repeating pattern throughout the film's narrative. Also repeated Is the alternation between scene» that present riveting, disquielingly exposed performers and scenes that debunk and ridicule tlie tricks of performance. The latter suggest that all performance tails down to a deceiving stunt when we are let in on the secret. After Betty's audition, recall, we are briefly deceived hy a doo-wop quiniel of retro-1950s singers lip-synching iheir way through another audition piece im a briefly hidden sound stage. Once we are apprised of this simple simulation technique, we promptly appraise the next auditiotwr with a practiced, skeptical air ("How wooden she Seems!"), as though our freshly gained knowledge of the precise strings being pulled had always been in our possession. Distance can so easily seem preferable to closeness.
Aimed with an awareness refined by repeated demonstrations of the method of artificially linking voice to mirnvd vocals, we arc nevertheless undone by belief once again as we accompany Betty and Rita to the Silencio theater. A Pellini-csquc master of ceremonies clearly (and one would think, needlessly) explains to us how sound and image lead separate lives in this illusion-saturated selling. No sooner lias he completed a prolonged deuumsiration of the fact that everything we hear is laped (using musical instruments to demonstrate) than u performer reminiscent of Uetty at her audition rakes the stage, and causes us to forget IfUttMly the elaborate counsel about sight and sound splitting. In a ravishing Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison's "Crying " the female vocalist, with a single painted tear on her face and dark hair and lipstick suggestive of Rita's recently discarded "vamp" look, carries us so fur into the unsuspected depths of this overfamiliar pop song that she becomes the tragic embodiment of all lovers' weeping; scalding tears personified. At me height of her aria, she stops moving her lips and collapses on stage; while unconscious she is summarily dragged off by two stagehands. The
12
"There It is": Betty rcturr to form in fconi of her stunned audience.
sound of someone's voice continues singing in her absence—powerfully, mockingly. Belly, who is on the verge of her own final disappearance from the narralive, is a spellbound witness of the singer's ardor, entering unreservedly into the spirit of the performer's sorrowful self-division, and weeping (persuasively) along with Rita who alls leslde her.
Just before the Spanish song commences, the sound of an impending storm onstage, connected—like a traumatic memory—lo Betty's nervous system, causes her to convulse in her scut. She attains the nuiximum pilch of visceral identification with a staged event, and has no capacity to separate any pan of Iter self from what she absorbs in litis charged atmosphere. On subsequent viewing!, it becomes clear that the storm sounds are fused' with Betty's (a.lca. Diane Selwyn) curlier/Inter act of suicide by pistol shot. The dealh overtakes her briéfjy during a performance, as one of the consequences of her belief, and then grams her permission to mount herself and the woman she herself has caused iodic for a few moments before fading from view.'
Ti.c narralive will soon allow us lo conclude thai sweetly affirmative "Betty" never existed outside of another actress's fantasy and dream life. (Diane Scl-w yn. Betty's author, is depressive, morbidly jealous, unsuccessful in her career, a killer, and teetering toward dcadi-by-suicidc. Hetso^lledrcallifeisarnelo-draňutusimprobable as the one that Belly tries out for in Wally"* office.) Strangely, Betty becomes most "reál" to us when we are certain that she had no chance of living at all, and that there ate no means, once she '.U.gone, to revive her. As we consider Belty in retrospect, we may well find something terribly truthful about this girl who never imagines lierself lost: a purely • Synthetic, but still striving image of hope, outfitted in :lir pathetic remnants of everyone's railed innocence. And heciiuflc Naomi Walls does such fl stunning job of
expanding and expunging Betty in their joint audition scene, fur ihe duration of MulliolUmd Drive she gets to fulfill Betty's animating dream. She turns into a movie star, one (il is worth noting) whoie mimicry of total failure becomes a recipe for success.
George Tolas leaches film and literatúra at tha University of Manitoba In Winnipeg. Ha Is the author alA House Mode of Light, and has been a long-time collaborator of Guy M.iddnYs—most recently on tho screenplay for The Sodden Mutk m tfie Vvbrtd.
Notes
1.   Madeline it Hitchcock's Burydicc, half-retwiied horn die underworld and fated to rum back «Vie irretrievably when hei lover insists at the end on taking her literally iihuv making ber literní), lie demaitdt ttuvt al>e i*X merely allow bendi (as a re-created vision), but declare once and (or all who she is. So« lie Ferguson it given more ť lunt: r t to took back iliuii Orpheus, but he ace* no better and fall* more tests—just at decisively. Betty it jjh at certainly David Lynch'* Euiydice. Stic aiicmpts to revoke ber alter ego', death (r*e«imat>ly. while a bulle: motes a leUurcly journey Uaiwgli Dia« Sclwyii'i brain). Tin, only earthly kWniiiy thai miglit be strong enough lo undo death is lhal of an scire« on she verge of unrdon
2.    WaliriBeniaiiiin.,'IleiUiiChildhooi|KouiHll90O.'in5e-leeií-ť Wrttbigi. \i>lu»t i: WJ-iS (Cambridge. MA: Belkaap Pre«. 2002), 346.
J. Tint image of a woman convulsing in [tie act of witnessing her own likely deuih scene may have lit source In Agnes Vauta"v Wtgahonä. the lonciponding moment In iliac dim dermis a woman uaruig at heiself m <■ minor afler die ao> cidcnally electrocutes herself.
Abstract litis essay ailucs thai fieiiy'i audition scene In MulholInnJ Diire it Ihe Kotcltn Stone f m the myiteriei of Star .».ting ia Hollywood film. Dy menu» of «a almost momein-by-moment reconstruction of die andilirm segment. Tolea demonstrate) !uy# our presume! Uur.ic supetiotliy m anince and role playing is cunningly exchanged for a believer's laid) in movie acting truth